Poyang Lake Photo:ShanghaiFinance.com

Boyang Lake lies in the northern part of Jiangxi Province, at the southern bank of the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River. It is divided into two parts by Songmenshan Mountain. The northern part is the water channel joining the Yangtze River, with the length of 40km and the width of 3-5km (the most narrow point is 2.8km or so). The southern part is the main lake, with the length of 133km and the furthest width of 74km. 

Boyang Lake has the annual mean precipitation of 1,636mm, because of the contribution of warm and humid monsoon. Since it possesses humid monsoon climate, Boyang Lake becomes accordingly "the country of rivers and green grass, and blooming plums in the misty rain", and "a land flowing with milk and honey". Its environment and climatic conditions are suitable for migratory birds to live through the winter. At late autumn and early winter in every year, thousands and thousands of birds migrate over here from Siberia of Russia, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, and northeastern and northwestern China. At spring

Poyang Lake Photo:ShanghaiFinance.com

(April) of next year, they gradually migrate away. So far, there are more than 300 kinds and a million plumes of birds, among which 50 kinds are rare birds, in the conservation area. It becomes one of the biggest bird conservation areas in the world. Especially, it is here where the biggest group of white cranes was found in the world.

Boyang Lake Watershed has been one of the rich, economically forward areas in China since ancient time. Many historically distinguished characters of our Nation, such as Xu Zhi, Tao Yuanmin, Lin Shihong, Liu Shu, Hong Shi, Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Da, have lived in the lake area. Many powerful heroes' stories have taken place here. For example, Zhou Yu trained his marine; marine war in Boyang Lake brought about between Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang; Taiping Army won great victory at Hukou; and Li Liejun launched "Secondary Revolution" at Hukou. Boyang Lake was the only waterway to Jiangxi from the north in ancient time. Anecdotes and legends arising from Boyang Lake are countless. The well-known lines - "fisher boat singing in the sunset glow and echoing at the Pengli Shore", of "Protasis of Tengwang Pavilion" wrote by Wang Bo, a poet in Tang Dynast, has depicted the fishers' cheerful scene of harvesting of fish back from Boyang Lake. Su Shi, a great

Poyang Lake Photo:ShanghaiFinance.com

poet in Song Dynast, wrote that "Green Mountains around, water without bound, in the middle was painted small or big island" in the poem of "Li Sishun's Drawing of Splendid Island of Changjiang River", which has given us a picture of the beautiful scenery of Boyang Lake. 

Splendid mountains and wonderful islands can be found everywhere around Boyang Lake. Mt. Shizhongshan and Mt. Dagushan in Hukou County, Mt. Nanshan and Laoyemiao Shrine in Douchang County and Mt. Luoxingdun in Xingzi County are intriguing tourist attractions. All scenic spots are connected to form a tourist route through cruisers, under the efforts of Jiujiang Tourism.

Tips on Bird-watching by Poyang Lake (Source: ctrip.com)

For bird viewing by the Poyang Lake, tourists can take speed boat from Nanchang to Wucheng Town (Wucheng Zhen), where a bird reserve is located. The boat ride takes 2 hours and 30 yuan. The speed boat back to Nanchang departs from the reserve at 2:30 pm. The birds may be frightened away by crowds of people, so it's a good idea to get there as early in the morning as possible. Binoculars are preferable.

Source: CRIenglish.com